Boris’s most brilliant wheeze to date was the letter to the Guardian attacking him

Rod Liddle salutes the genius of the Tory mayoral candidate in sending a spoof petition condemning himself and praising Livingstone to the skies to the Left’s in-house newspaper

The battle to become Mayor of London is getting dirty. Someone from Boris Johnson’s campaign team — or maybe Boris himself — put a hilarious spoof letter in the Guardian this week. It purported to be from 100 ‘academics’, luvvies, lesbians and professional agitators, all of them aghast at the notion that the ‘right-wing and reactionary’ Boris might actually win. It was a quite brilliant work of parody — long-winded, witless, sanctimonious and marvellously self-important. What Boris had done, with panache, was exemplify the extraordinary arrogance and naivety of a certain tranche of liberal opinion. After all, who would give a monkey’s that Baldrick from Blackadder and some bloke called Ivor Gaber, the visiting professor of media studies at the Central Polytechnic of Dollis Hill or something, thinks that Ken should win the election? Well, clearly Baldrick and Ivor Gaber.

That was the point — they really do believe that people care what they think. They abide beneath a cloak woven from the most extraordinary self-regard. It was a very clever touch as well to ensure that about half of the signatories to the letter don’t live in London and therefore have no vote or indeed know what the hell they are talking about — the ubiquitous Billy Bragg, for example, who fled to Dorset some years ago, having suffered enough of Ken’s stewardship in the capital. And the Labour MPs for the Gower and North-West Leicestershire. And the crop-headed lesbian feminist member of the National Association of Irrationally Furious Women Against Everything, Bea Campbell — who works in Newcastle.